Sexually explicit, foul mouthed Muppets in Happytime Murders get legal thumbs up

The distributors of the Melissa McCarthy puppet crime caper The Happytime Murders have been given the A-OK by a US judge.

According to a ruling, the felt defendants are free to keep referencing both "Sesame" and the "Street" in their promotions of the foul-mouthed and sexually explicit movie.

The decision raises the spectre of millions of young minds being corrupted by accidentally buying a ticket to see what they imagined was the latest Muppet adventure.

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Melissa McCarthy stars in the controversial new Muppets movie.

That, at least, was the proposition at the heart of the case brought by Sesame Workshop, the owner of the Sesame Street brand.

The company, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) before its name change in 2001, sued last week to try to have the tagline "No sesame. All street" removed from promotional materials for the film, arguing that the public would be confused and think the movie was supported by Sesame Street.

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Lily Tomlin and 'stoner' Muppets in a 1975 episode of Saturday Night Live.

However, the case has failed, with US District Judge Vernon Broderick ruling in a New York courtroom on Wednesday (US time) that distributor STX Productions can continue to use the tagline. Judge Vernon said Sesame Workshop had not demonstrated that moviegoers were confused or that sponsors or parents were complaining.

There's no doubt any pre-school kiddies stumbling across The Happytime Murders when it opens in the US on August 17 (and New Zealand on August 27) are in for a shock, what with bloody murders, a profusion of F-words and the rather unedifying sight of a puppet private eye ejaculating (and then some) all over his office after having sex with a (puppet) client.

But the responsibility for any psychological damage would surely lie with the parents or guardians who had taken the little tackers there, rather than the makers or distributors of the film.

It is hard not to conclude that a big part of the reason for the lawsuit in the first place was the identity of the filmmakers: the Jim Henson Company, the original creators of the puppets for Sesame Street and The Muppets.

Though it was CTW which put the creatures to air on PBS with Sesame Street in 1969, it was Jim Henson who created them and owned the copyright in them.

Following Henson's death in 1990, a series of complicated and rather lucrative deals have seen the company sold by the Henson family (for US$680 million - about NZ$976.5m - in 2000) and then bought back again three years later (for US$84m).

In separate deals the rights to the Sesame Street characters were sold to Sesame Workshop in 2000 for US$180million, while the Muppet characters and brand were purchased by Disney for an undisclosed figure that has been reported as likely around the $US200 million mark. (Kermit the frog, whose creation pre-dated Sesame Street by more than a decade, is now owned by Disney, but licensed to Sesame Workshop for use in its long-running children's program.)

Meanwhile, the Henson Company, which is headed by Jim's son Brian (who directed a couple of Muppets movies in the pre-Disney era), has continued to develop and produce content through a number of streams, including Henson Alternative, the adult-oriented arm responsible for The Happytime Murders.

The new movie is far from the first time a group of filmmakers have seen the comic potential in putting very adult language in the mouths of puppet-marionettes, or in probing what goes on in Muppetland after the children have gone to bed.

Meet the Feebles (1989), from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, was a behind-the-scenes look at a variety show where interspecies sex, drugs and rock'n'roll ruled – at least until a jilted ex took revenge with a machinegun.

The Broadway musical Avenue Q explored more realistic adult themes with puppets and performers side-by-side on stage.

In fact, Jim Henson himself saw the potential in the idea. Saturday Night Live's first season in 1975 featured a bunch of stoner Muppets singing with Lily Tomlin, and the pilot episode of The Muppet Show itself (also 1975) was titled Sex and Violence, though it didn't feature much of either.

More recently, the Henson Company has produced four seasons of a parody panel show, No, You Shut Up, in which human host Paul F. Tompkins is joined by a variety of occasionally furry and foul-mouthed guests.

In other words, the marionette-puppet hybrids first unleashed on the world by Jim Henson in 1955 have been Street for way longer than they've been Sesame.

Thanks to this legal ruling, they will happily be allowed to stay that way for a good deal longer.